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Friday, March 14, 2003

By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Theater audiences think Squonk Opera is either a groundbreaking performance art troupe or a bunch of clunky amateurs who got booted off Broadway.

	Squonk Opera WHERE: Rex Theatre, South Side WHEN: 9 tonight with Soma Mestizo; 9 p.m. tomorrow with Hearts and Science TICKETS: $10, 412-381-6811 WEB SITE: www.squonkopera.com

People who think they understand Squonk best remember an early '90s avant-garde band with jazz and classical influences who wore goofy costumes and attracted beer swilling crowds at Bloomfield Bridge Tavern.

"I remember the very first show that we played," says musical director Jackie Dempsey, lifting her head back in laughter. "We were opening for Ploughman's Lunch, so the audience was mostly at the back of the room talking because they had come to see them. We started playing, wearing all the props and everything, and people started moving closer and closer to the stage [until] they were all standing really close with their jaws hanging open and being absolutely, totally quiet."

Squonk Opera brings it back to the bars this weekend for a CD release party at The Rex, which was recently awarded a liquor license. The concerts tonight and tomorrow celebrate the independent release of the soundtrack from their latest ethereal dreamscape, "Squonk Opera's Inferno," which premiered as "Burn" in 2001 at City Theatre.

No one, particularly the band, troupe, ensemble, whatever, agrees on exactly what Squonk Opera is. But it's pretty clear what it's not. Although Squonk played Broadway, collects arts grants and portrays characters on stage, there are no theater scripts, linear plots or narrative. Although the music is composed as movements of a single musical work, there's no written score. And although Dempsey is classically trained at piano, traditional operas don't use windsynths and programmable drum pads, and chamber orchestras don't accommodate accordions, homemade props, pratfalls or flatulence jokes.

Ultimately, Squonk is probably an informal reincarnation of a 17th-century English court masque, which combined elaborate sets, speech, music, singing, dancing, audience interaction and costumed revelry.

"I think of us as a band with visual spectacles," says Dempsey. "The only time there's a written score is when it's required for a grant proposal and I sit down and figure it out. I think of a show as one big musical piece, like in the classical world, but it's similar to a band in that it's collaborative. I come up with a musical foundation and go to each Squonker and say 'Can you try this? Sing high here, sing low there, play a duet in this part.' Because of all that's going on, there's no room for improvisation. Sometimes I write a piece of music before we know what the show's going to be about and I adapt it to fit some part of the show."

That said, that's not what Squonk Opera is doing this weekend. The CD release portion of the show spotlights the band in costume, surrounded by film projection and playing selected cuts from "Inferno," a sulfurous melding of musical imagery from the Centralia, Pa., mine fires and Dante's greatest hits. Set 2 is a sampler from their Broadway show, "Bigsmorgasbordwunderwork," which was, in fact, a sampler of previous works.

Dempsey, flutist and artistic director Steve O'Hearn, and percussionist Kevin Kornicki will introduce new members making their Squonking debut. Singer Christina Honeycutt is a Seattle rock singer with a theater degree. Pittsburgh bassist Jeff Beck plays out with several jazz groups, including Umezu.

The soundtrack, produced in Pittsburgh by Dempsey and Kornicki, parallels on digitized plastic what a full-scale Squonk show does on stage: It establishes an emotional focal point and then moves listeners to a different one. Former members Jody Abbott and Nathan Fay perform distinctively, leaving marks for posterity. David Wallace rebuilds his wall-of-guitar-sound from the stage production (expect a cameo this weekend), and The Balkan Babes' Lynette Garland arranges a charming Eastern European interlude. Dempsey's movements range from bombastic to cuddly, and performances are anything but musical wallpaper. Nevertheless, record store clerks won't know what to do with it and "Squonk Opera's Inferno" will probably be consigned to the purgatory of the New Age bins.

"We're no longer with Angel Records, so we have a lot more freedom in terms of what we can do with the CD," says Dempsey. "They treated us well, but I think we'll sell most of [the discs] in person on tour and, of course, get to keep the money."

Since New York, Squonk has taken "Bigsmorgasbord" and the new show to colleges and festivals across the United States. More shows are planned for this year, including an August festival in Germany. But Dempsey says she's stoked about the scaled-down bar gigs, including this weekend's shows and a two-night stand at Mr. Small's Funhouse April 25-26.

"We want to do these bar shows with low ticket prices to reach out to people who don't usually go to the Byham or City Theatre," she says. "In a theater, a lot of times people don't know what to think. 'Should I laugh? Do we clap now? Is this supposed to be funny?' But when you're hanging out in a bar, everything is supposed to be fun. We can be goofier and have more audience interaction. We think doing these shows is really going to help us to form whatever it is we do next."